Painting of a Coal Miner

This painting, titled Nuestra Herencia by Julio Zavala, was commissioned by Sister Veronica Marie Lucero in remembrance of, and to call attention to the recurring suffering of the coal mining people of La Region Carbonera in Northern Mexico in the state of Coahuila. 

The title translates to “Our Inheritance” and evokes the tragedy of El Pozo La Morita, an aptly named coal mine where 12 miners perished in a methane explosion on September 29, 2001, in the Ejido Santa Maria de Guadalupe, a village where the sisters' had a mission at the time. The miners' widows were left to raise the families on their own.